Abstract: There is no empirical answer to support whether internet finance can alleviate regional discrimination and gradient development in economic growth though it can bring out the continuous deepening of financial services. Based on the stochastic frontier model, this paper incorporates four factors such as labour, traditional capital, internet financial capital and regulations into the analytical framework of disparity of regional economic growth in order to investigate the contribution of different factors and the influence on technical efficiency. The empirical research concludes that the hypothesis of economic growth convergence cannot be embodied, the difference of regional economic growth is still expanding and the average technical efficiency of the relative common front of each region shows U-shaped trend; traditional capital and labour are still the main driving forces of regional economic growth; as a new form of financial resource allocation, internet finance has obvious technical inefficiency and it fails to play the role of inclusive finance, the one-way output pattern of the Middle and the West towards the Eastern region hasn′t been changed, and the phenomenon of Matthew Effect and regional disparity are significant. The result is enough to explain that internet finance does not affect the inherent logical relationship between financial capital and regional economic growth though its development degree cannot improve the allocating efficiency of regional financial resources and promote convergence growth of regional economy remarkably. At least, the role of internet finance should not be overestimated in the present time.

Key words: stochastic frontier model, disparity of regional economic growth, technical efficiency, internet finance